Queen of Nothing

2. A Ladder? But Your Parents Aren't Even Home

Modern family played in the background I cleared away the dinner table piled with red-stamped bills and notices. I'd been sending them to my mother in Switzerland, and receiving them back, unopened. This had been the longest I'd gone without hearing from her, and if I weren't already well acquainted with her patterns, I would have been worried. 

But I swallowed all of that down, hid them in a cupboard, and started wiping the counter down, noticing the family picture there. Mom, Me and Gia, right as she'd started high school. I must have been in middle school at the time, judging by the braces and shy look I'd offered the camera.

I wondered if my family was happy in this picture--if things had been going well. 

Because a year from then, my older sister would run away from home, to live god knows where, doing god-knows-what. The only indication that we received of her existence was the birthday card she'd send me each year. Complete with her handwriting and reassurance that she was doing well, better actually. That was when my mother started hiding whiskey bottles in gym bags, taking extra long to get ready before "work." Her work trips became longer and more frequent, until she'd stopped coming back altogether. 

That worked fine for me. We were never close, and it had become a relief for my fourteen year old self to be able to fall asleep without the fear that I'd wake up to her sprawled all over the floor in a pool of vomit. 

I wrung the towel out into the sink, hung it out to dry before picking up my phone. There were more messages than I could count, but Cole's shot to the top. 

C: Come over now. 

I frowned and typed back: 

M: Well since you asked so nicely

A moment passed. He had to be in a mood if he was texting me this way. Although he seemed to always be in a mood these days. 

C: Please fucking come over now. I'm not asking you twice.

I knew this was toxic, had spent entire journals mulling over the fact that he was an asshole and that I deserved better, blah blah. I'd torn through self-help books, advice columns, and reddit threads, for one piece of advice to keep coming back to me. 

That I needed to end it with him, once and for all. 

It wasn't like I hadn't thought about it, on several occasions. After all, I was popular, with at least ten other guys who would have been willing to take his spot in a heartbeat. I knew that I was worth a lot more than what this man was offering me. 

But that's the difference between knowing better and seeking better, right? It was that little nuance that kept me in his orbit. And as pathetic as it sounded, I wasn't ready for the heartbreak of losing him too. Not when he was the first person I'd ever told about my fucked up family. 

I remember the day I'd told him about everything in vivid detail. He'd listened, quietly, not offering much comment. And when I'd finished, he'd pulled me closely and kissed me on the forehead with a gentleness I wasn't accustomed to. It was like having a live butterfly land on my face. 

"I'd never run away from you," he'd whispered afterwards, during a moment of post-coital haze. Cole and I were far more similar than I'd care to admit. With manufactured outward appearances, we'd tricked the whole school into thinking that we had it all, that we truly were Gods that walked amidst mere mortals.  

But only we knew what the other lacked. And try as we might, we'd never come close to being what the other needed. He was as integral to my image as I was to his. And so I turned a blind eye to his philandering tendencies, the fine hollowness that existed right beneath the surface.